“In soft Complaints no longer Ease I find”: Poetic Configurations of Melancholy by Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. DISSERTATION zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor philosophiae (Dr. phil.) eingereicht an der Philosophischen Fakultät II der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin und erfolgreich verteidigt am 31.10.2013 von Sabine Blackmore Präsident der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin: Prof. Dr. Jan-Hendrik Olbertz Dekanin der Philosophischen Fakultät II: Prof. Dr. Helga Schwalm Gutachterinnen: 1. Prof. Dr. Helga Schwalm 2. Prof. Dr. Verena Lobsien Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 Research Proposition, Argument, and Aim ................................................................................3 Melancholy and Gender ...............................................................................................................6 Women and Melancholy before 1680 .......................................................................................10 Terminology and Methodology ................................................................................................15 Chapter Outline ...........................................................................................................................20 1. Hot Blood and Nervous Minds: The Construction of Female Melancholies in Medical Discourses of the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries ................. 22 Introduction .................................................................................................................................22 1.1 Introducing “Women’s Melancholy” ...................................................................................23 Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) .................................................................23 From Causes to Cures ........................................................................................................................... 24 “Women’s Melancholy” ....................................................................................................................... 29 The Female Voice: Jane Sharp’s The Midwives Book (1671) ....................................................35 1.2 Between Humours and Nerves: Melancholy, Hysteria and Hypochondria .................42 Thomas Willis’s Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes (1683) and An Essay of the Pathology of The Brain and the Nervous Stock (1684) .................................................................42 Nervous melancholia ............................................................................................................................ 44 Hysteria & Hypochondria: A Re-gendered Case of Melancholy? ................................................. 49 Thomas Sydenham’s “Letter to Dr Cole” (1681/82) ..............................................................53 1.3 Early Eighteenth-Century Melancholy – a Female Malady? ............................................56 Richard Blackmore’s A Treatise of the Spleen and Vapours (1725) ..........................................56 Hysteria – Fact or Fiction? ................................................................................................................... 59 Mixed Disorders .................................................................................................................................... 61 George Cheyne’s The English Malady (1733) ............................................................................63 Résumé ................................................................................................................................... 73 2. Poetics of Melancholy ..................................................................................................... 75 Introduction .................................................................................................................................75 2.1 Writings about Melancholy and Melancholy Writings ....................................................76 Writings about Melancholy .......................................................................................................76 “Discursive Melancholy Writings” .................................................................................................... 77 Literary Writings of Melancholy ..............................................................................................79 “Literary-Discursive” Melancholy Writings ..................................................................................... 79 Formal-Experiential Melancholy Writings ........................................................................................ 81 The Melancholic Self and the Melancholy Experience ..........................................................83 2.2 Melancholy and Poetry ...........................................................................................................87 Intersections and Effects ............................................................................................................87 The Problem of Self-Reflexivity .......................................................................................................... 88 ‘Melancholizing’ the Reader ................................................................................................................ 89 Résumé ................................................................................................................................... 91 3. Poetic Figurations Of Melancholy ................................................................................ 92 Introduction .................................................................................................................................92 3.1 From Milton to Gray ................................................................................................................93 The Seventeenth-Century Literary Melancholy Prototype: Milton’s “Il Penseroso” and “L’Allegro” (1645) .......................................................................................................................93 From Milton to Gray: Configurations of Eighteenth-Century Melancholy Poetry .........101 The Eighteenth-Century Literary Melancholy Prototype: Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751) ...........................................................................................109 3.2 Resisting and Revelling: Female Figurations of the poetic-melancholic Tradition .115 “In soft Complaints no longer ease I find”: Anne Wharton’s ”To Melpomene Against Complaint” (1693) .....................................................................................................................117 “[M]y old inveterate foe”: Anne Finch, Lady Winchilsea’s “Ardelia to Melancholy” (comp. 1690-91) ..........................................................................................................................123 “[T]he pensive songstress”: Elizabeth Singer Rowe’s “Despair” (1739) ...........................133 “Indulge my pensive Mind”: Elizabeth Carter’s “Ode to Melancholy” (1739) ...............142 “Th’ intoxicated poet’s bane”: Henrietta Knight, Lady Luxborough’s “Written to a near Neighbour in a tempestuous Night 1748” (1755) .................................................................152 “From Pictur’d Regions and Imgain’d Worlds”: Mary Leapor’s “The Fields of Melancholy and Chearfulness” (1748) ...................................................................................157 Résumé ................................................................................................................................. 169 4. Melancholic Mourning: The Elegy as Source of Female Poetic-Melancholic Selves .................................................................................................................................... 172 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................172 4.1 Elegy: Mourning or Melancholia? ......................................................................................173 Digression: Freud, the Elegy, and the Gendering of Melancholy ......................................174 The ‘Female’ Elegy: Between Mourning and Melancholy ....................................................179 Religious Melancholy and Feminine Grief ...................................................................................... 186 4.2 Melancholic Mourning: Loss as a Female Melancholic-Poetic Experience ................191 “I’m tir’d with Life, and over-charg’d with Woe”: Mary Chudleigh’s Elegies ...............194 “On the Death of His Highness the Duke of Glocester” (1703) ..................................................... 195 “On the Death of my Honoured Mother Mrs. Lee: A Dialogue between Lucinda and Marissa” (1703) ..................................................................................................................................................... 208 “On the Death of my dear Daughter Eliza Maria Chudleigh: A Dialogue between Lucinda and Marissa” (1703) ..................................................................................................................................... 215 “Oh regard a mother’s moan”: Mehetabel Wright’s “To an Infant expiring the Second Day of its Birth” (1733) .............................................................................................................220